


bringing the heat and the word is out

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, FatT Rarepair Swap, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 19:10:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14817200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: “I mean it, you looked good out there today.”Augustus finally collected his thoughts enough to look Diego in the eyes, his face burning, and said, almost accidentally, “You looked good too.”“Of course,” said Diego. “I always look good.”OR,snapshots of a relationship, in which there are several explosions and also a happy ending(canon compliant minus one death)





	bringing the heat and the word is out

**Author's Note:**

> This is my rarepair swap gift for @chickenhuggit, I hope you like it! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be extremely On My Bullshit and write some space pirate romance

VI.

Hudson Thorne wasn’t sure what he expected to feel, being planetside during combat. Returning to Kallope had been everything and nothing like he’d wanted it to be, and in the days leading up to it he couldn’t tell if it felt more like a homecoming or like death, a fixed point that he couldn't see beyond. He still couldn’t decide, if he stayed on the surface while his Fleet fought above him because it was his home or if returning had felt so final that he couldn't imagine leaving again. Not that it mattered much, and he could have an existential crisis about it later, because right now all that mattered was how remote and helpless he felt.

He’d wanted to rest, been so tired, and the ground felt good and solid beneath him, in a way that the rushing engines and swaying decks of his ship never quite had, no matter how many years of his life he poured into it, no matter that there had been a point, a few years before they’d taken Kalliope, when he looked around and thought, _maybe this is my real home_. Still, it was a relief to be settled, to know where he was going to be the next day, the next year, and it hadn’t been too difficult to let his lieutenants take over most of the actual work of running the Fleet. He was busy enough on the ground: let Diego and Jill and Augustus have the sky.

But now he would’ve given almost anything to be back up there again-wouldn’t have given up Kalliope for it, not now when he’d come so far but. Almost anything, to be part of the fight against Rigor, to be the one not just coordinating but personally directing his Fleet, being able to react in the moment, being close enough to do anything other than watch the scanner in horror as Diego’s ship was cut off from the rest.

He never did put in the armor reinforcements Thorne wanted him to, that the other pilots did. Said it made his ship too heavy, said it wouldn’t be as fun to fly if it couldn’t _move_.

It was an old argument, one that had been serious the first few times, shouting at each in the empty hangar bay, voices echoing, about wasting resources and _do you always have to be showing off_ and _don’t you fucking trust me to do my job_ settling into an ironic inside joke, anything unrelated goes wrong and one of them says, _well this wouldn’t have happened if only your ship had better armor_ and the barbs they’d once traded had become so dull that Thorne had all but forgotten why he’d cared so much about the argument in the first place, but he sure remembered now.

“Careful,” he said, and Diego just laughed, the sound distorted by static interference.

“What, don’t think I can handle it?” he said. “Come on, Captain, I’ve fought bigger than this.”

“You’re surrounded,” he said. “You need to fall back now, to where Jill is regrouping.”

“I got this,” Diego said. “Come on, don’t you trust me?”

And there was a roar of sound from Diego’s comms-explosions and ripping metal and a jumble of words he could hardly hear and couldn’t understand- and then nothing.

 

III.

“Look out,” Augustus said, comms crackling to life, “there’s one behind you.” And then, seconds later, Diego saw the glow of an explosion as the mech on his tail crumpled into flames. “You’re welcome.”

“Anytime,” said Diego, going into a completely necessary barrel roll and darting between two more of the enemy mechs so that they had to swerve into each other to avoid crashing into him. “Though really, you should be thanking me.”

“Yeah?” Augustus said. “What for? I’m the one who’s always got your back” As if Diego wasn’t currently in the process of luring one of the few remaining enemy ships directly into Augustus’s line of fire, which would both win them the battle and also let Augustus take credit for the victory.

“Yeah,” said Diego, “and I know how much you like to look at me.”

“Save the flirting for later,” Hudson said, but his tone was friendly enough that Diego knew he didn’t really mean it.

Diego sighed dramatically, sending a wave of static feedback over the communication channel, and said, “Please, Captain. We can handle a bit of multitasking.”

Flying with Augustus felt like dancing, if dancing were a hundred percent more fun and half as effortless. He knew it was cliched, but he didn’t care. There was really no other word for it. Once Augustus had gotten over whatever it was that held him back at the beginning- modesty, petulance, sheer unfamiliarity with the chaotic formations the Odamas pilots flew, so different from the organized lines of Horizon mechs, though most likely it was some mix of the three- he worked with Diego better than anyone ever had. Even before they could hold a civil conversation that went longer than exchanging necessary information, they flew together like planets in orbit, so smoothly it seemed choreographed, or instinctual.

He’d seen videos of other mech pilots, of the old hero Jace Rethal, and that Aria Joie who imitated him, the graceful way they moved. Augustus was nothing like that, not nearly as artistic or as flashy, but he was dependable, technical, the ideal complement to Diego’s tendency to show off and overcomplicate everything, drawing out a fight long after it was won, just to keep proving that he could do better tricks, take bigger risks, than anyone else in the sector.

“Sure,” said Augustus, “as long as you don’t mind me taking down more mechs than you.”

“Want to bet?” Diego said, grinning widely even though he knew Augustus couldn’t see his face, hungry for a challenge. “Even you’re not distracting enough to get me to lose.”

 

VII.

He was surprised to get the call, surprised that Thorne would reach out to him at a time like this, when surely he was busy enough rebuilding Kalliope. Augustus was definitely busy enough desperately trying to keep each of the separatist worlds from crumbling before they had a chance to establish their independence. Their split has been slightly more amicable than his and Diego’s, mostly because he didn’t take it as a personal insult the way Diego did, but they were still not exactly on friendly terms anymore. Thorne was a professional, and Augustus was trying to be, with varying levels of success, but he respected him still, just thought he was wrong. Diego, on the other hand, didn’t bother with professionalism, or rather his definition of professionalism wasn’t the same as everyone else’s, but what else would you expect from the man who thought torture was a valid recruiting method and could negotiate peace with nothing more than a knife up his sleeve, a few well-worded threats, and some strategic retracting of his mask.

“Admiral,” he said. “What do you need?”

“It’s Diego,” Thorne said, and Augustus felt his heart drop, every worst case scenario running through his mind at the same time: dead in a thousand horrible ways, missing, controlled by Rigor, defected to OriCon. Or maybe it wasn’t bad news at all, maybe Augustus was just catastrophizing, but from the tone of Thorne’s voice he didn’t think so.

“What is it?”

“His ship went down in the battle,” said Thorne, “but he’s still alive. I want you to be there when he wakes up.” And everything Augustus had been trying not to feel, the whole complicated mess that was his feelings for Diego Rose, came crashing back down.

 

I.

Augustus had only been out of the infirmary for a week, but already he’d started doing drills in one of the mechs, which had been patched together from scavenged parts but still better than someone so new ought to have. Diego was very much choosing to forget that he’d started flying for Odamas less than a week after he defected too. They needed good pilots, and they couldn’t afford to be picky. Privately, he had to admit that Augustus was better than just pretty good, but that was beside the point.

“Listen, hotshot, you might have been a big deal with Horizon and you might have impressed Thorne but you still have to prove yourself to _me_ , and that’ll take more than just a little fancy flying.”

Augustus looked mildly alarmed, but he looked Diego in the eyes and said, “Isn’t that all you do?”

“Yeah,” Diego said, smiling slow and dangerous, showing his teeth, a few segments of his mask flickering around the edges, so Augustus could almost see what lay underneath, “but I do it better.”

“Well, Mr. Rose,” said Augustus, and Diego’s lip curled indignantly at the name, thrown out in a tone so overly respectful that it was disrespectful, “I guess I have a lot to learn from you.”

“Good luck,” Diego said, “trying to keep up.”

“Then it’s a good thing,” Augustus said, “that I’ve always been a quick learner.”

 

II.

Augustus knew intellectually that he was tired and sore and hungry, and that the only thing he should be doing right now was shoving an energy bar in his mouth and passing out for a while, but like hell was he actually going to do the responsible thing right now, not with the adrenaline rushing through him, his hands still shaking, the afterimages of ships exploding, blossoming fireworks against the dark of space and behind his eyelids.

It was intoxicating, and he let himself be swept along by the energy of the other celebrating pilots, the corridors a whirl of color and light and in the swirl of brightness and warmth. He found Diego and reached for him, and Diego grabbed him by the shoulders and Augustus yelled, over the general roar of post-combat excitement, “Did you fucking see that! Did you see what I did!” at the same time that Diego, probably forgetting in the moment his usual carefully cultivated smugness, said, “Nice job out there, hotshot.”

Because they worked well together now, had for some time. At first it had been grudging, and they kept getting in each other’s way. On Diego’s part it was probably intentional, but on Augustus’s it was an accident, still getting used to the horribly unpredictable way Diego flew. Well, mostly an accident, because he learned how to read Diego’s chaotic flight patterns earlier than he let on, and started getting in his way on purpose just to fuck with him, blocking his shots and forcing him to stop short to avoid collisions and answering his increasing frustration with, “Sorry, Mr. Rose, I’m still getting used to these controls,” and, “Sorry, Mr. Rose, you know I’m just not as good as you.”

Maybe he still held a grudge for how Diego had welcomed him aboard, but maybe he was just irrationally pissed off by that stupid flashy rose he had painted on the side of his ship, and his stupid flashy but unfairly effective fighting style, and his stupid perfectly sculpted jawline and that stupid smirk that said that he knew exactly how unfairly attractive he was.

It tooks weeks for Diego to call him on his shit, and it only happened because it came down to a choice between keeping up the charade and saving Diego’s stupid annoying life, and doing the right thing won out, just barely. And he even got to feel a little smug about it, because despite Thorne’s inscrutability and Diego’s mask- his metaphorical emotional mask, not his literal one- he could tell that they really were impressed.

Maybe because he didn’t respond quick enough, Diego leaned closer, his mouth directly next to Augustus’s ear, and said, “I mean it, you looked good out there today.”

Augustus finally collected his thoughts enough to look Diego in the eyes, his face burning, and said, almost accidentally, “You looked good too.”

“Of course,” said Diego. “I always look good.”

“Yeah,” said Augustus, suddenly no longer sure of what to say, not sure if he wanted Diego to understand what he meant when he was barely sure himself, or if he wanted to melt from embarrassment and pretend this whole conversation never happened. Their faces were very close together, and Augustus got distracted by the fluttering of Diego’s eyelashes.

“So are you gonna kiss me?” Diego said. “Or are we going to stand around here all day?”

“Oh,” said Augustus, and then their lips met and neither of them said anything more for a long time.

 

V.

“You’re really doing this?”

“You could come with me,” Augustus said, not looking up from his packing, as if he had more than one bag’s worth of belongings and he hadn’t just been rearranging them for the past ten minutes without adding anything new.

Diego laughed, ugly and humorless. “You know I can’t.” And then, casually, arms crossed, like he didn’t care what the answer was even though he felt like the right- or wrong- word from Augustus would tear him apart: “You could stay.”

“You know I can’t,” Augustus echoed, and Diego flinched. “Come on, you have to see that I’m right. What’s the point in taking over all these planets if we’re just gonna rule them, exactly like OriCon or the Diaspora or whoever the fuck did? You all talk so much about freedom, when are we all actually going to be free?”

“We can’t split now, not if we want to be strong enough to hold the blockade, and something else is coming, something big, that we’ll need to fight together.”

“That’s Thorne talking,” said Augustus. “You don’t really believe it, any more than I do.”

“Yeah, you might be right,” said Diego, “but we’re still better off sticking together.” It was probably at this point fairly obvious that he wasn’t talking about the Free States or even the fleet anymore. “I don’t really care about this Rigor thing, and it’s not like I ever really cared about getting Kalliope back. It’s us that I care about, you, me, and Hudson.”

“And what about your whole hotshot pilot thing?” Augustus said, mocking. “You always said that was your priority.”

“Well, yeah,” said Diego, “but you guys are a close second,” and then, quieter, more seriously: “I thought you understood that.”

“Maybe you didn’t understand _me_ as well as you thought,” Augustus said, “if you don’t see how much this matters to me. But I guess you don’t care what the fight’s for, or who you’re fighting with, as long as it’s a fight.” His disappointment hurt more than if he’d been angry. If he yelled at him, at least they could have a proper argument about it instead of this drawn out miserable goodbye.

And there was nothing Diego could say in his defense, because Augustus was right. Sometimes it seemed like fighting was the only thing that made him feel alive, and one fight was as good as another, no matter the cause. It was all just an excuse to feel that rush of adrenaline and yeah, maybe some of it was showing off, but why did that matter? He could do it better than anyone else; why shouldn’t everyone know it? And since one fight was as good as another, didn’t it follow that Diego had stayed with the fleet for a reason? He could have left at any time, could have defected like he did before, gone to any of the mercenary groups in the sector that would’ve given him a quicker ship and more powerful guns, but he’d stuck around, and Augustus was kidding himself if he didn’t know perfectly well that he and Hudson were the reason Diego stayed.

Augustus kissed him then, slowly, and Diego closed his eyes and leaned in, but before he could reach up to hold him, Augustus pulled away. He refused to cry now, as a matter of pride, and so he swallowed back the lump in his throat and walked away. Augustus might have watched him leave, for all he knew, but Diego didn’t look back.

 

IV.

Augustus hadn’t been prepared for how taking back Kalliope would make him feel. He’d been on the _Yersinia_ for so long, listening to the crew, especially Thorne and the other original Kalliopeans, talk about Kalliope like it was a symbol for everything they’d ever wanted, and he still hadn’t realized how much he’d internalized that. But now, looking around at his crew with their scars and the inhabitants of Kalliope with their flashy body mods and some people with some of each, he thought he understood what he’d been fighting for ever since he joined the Fleet, and what he’d been looking for since ever before that: freedom.

There was too much work to be done to justify a night off, but there was nothing that could stop the Fleet from celebrating the fact that they’d accomplished their life goal, and what had probably once been some kind of government building now looked more like a nightclub. Thorne and his lieutenants, Augustus and Diego among them, had claimed a table in the back corner, where Thorne could sit with his back to the wall and watch the dancefloor and all the exits at the same time. Augustus probably should’ve been helping with that, but Diego had his arm slung around his shoulder, and Augustus was having trouble thinking straight.

The music was so loud the bass rippled through their drinks, and neon lights flashed all around, reflecting off their glasses and their eyes. Even though he was, as ever, alert to danger, Thorne was smiling more than Augustus had ever seen, laughing louder than Augustus thought he could. And Diego was beautiful, as always, but tonight it was more than that. Tonight his face was flushed and his mask was glimmering in the shifting light and his hands were moving wildly to punctuate the story he was telling, and the longer Augustus looked at him the more he fell in love. As if he felt Augustus watching him, he paused in the middle of a sentence to press a kiss to his temple, and Augustus rested his head on his shoulder and closed his eyes.

 

VIII.

There was a soft humming in the back of Diego’s mind, and he felt a rush of panic, struggling against whatever was wrapped around him, opening his eyes even if the too-bright light feels like it was stabbing directly into his skull. But the humming was in his ears, not his mind, not the way Rigor was. He was safe. He repeated the words to himself a few times, convincing himself that they were true. He was safe. His movements were restricted by the blankets and tubes and bandages and medical apparatuses presumably keeping him alive, humming and blinking and occasionally letting out a soft beep.

His eyes adjusted, and the two blurry figures on the other side of the room came into focus: one in a rumpled flightsuit, his head down, probably asleep, the other taller, awake, looking as tired as Diego had ever seen, and Diego’s heart jumped in his chest. One of the machines chirped disapprovingly and asked him if he’d like more painkillers.

Hudson nudged Augustus’s knee with his own, and Augustus was jolted awake, reaching for a gun that he almost definitely wasn’t allowed to have. They pulled their chairs closer as Diego managed to force himself into a sitting position, feeling like every bone he had was protesting the movement. Hudson laid a hand on his shoulder, gently enough that his clawed hand barely disturbed the bandages there, and said, “Welcome back.”

“It’s over?”

“We couldn’t have done it without you,” he said.

“And I didn’t even need that extra shielding,” said Diego, trying for a smirk that probably came out more like a grimace, but Hudson only frowned, and Augustus shook his head.

“Come on, hotshot, if you get a ship with better armor, I’ll even paint that fancy rose on the side for you,” said Augustus. “But you have to admit it would help.”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “I almost died. I can be as stubborn as I want,” ignoring the fact that he didn’t need an excuse to ignore advice or orders or criticism. “Wait, does this mean you’re coming back?”

“Yeah,” said Augustus. “I mean, we’ll all have to work together to rebuild, and the blockade is gone anyway so there’s not as much that we disagree over, and-”

“Just say what you mean already,” said Hudson, but he sounded more amused than actually irritated, and it all felt so familiar that Diego laughed without really knowing why, just that they were all alive and together and they won, and honestly what else did he need.

“And I missed you,” Augustus said simply, and then he took Diego’s hand and lifted it to his lips and tenderly brushed a kiss across his knuckles.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sure Fire Winners by Adam Lambert
> 
> Find me on twitter @s_artemisios where I'll be yelling about FatT and how much I love Diego Rose


End file.
